Anything For a Friend
by I've-Gotta-Be-Me
Summary: Growing up has its trials and tribulations for everyone, but no one moreso than Kurt Hummel. Not only does he have to deal with weirdo kids moving into his neighborhood every now and then, but his whole childhood seems like one big question: Why is everything so weird? The biggest of all being "Why is it so difficult to grow up with two really, REALLY attractive boys?"


Kurt paced back and forth in his bedroom wringing his hands.

It was Thursday night, the eve of the biggest day of his life. Well, the biggest day in the 15 (and three quarters) years he'd experienced so far.

So far, high school was pretty much like middle school, only there were more classes and more opportunities to fall asleep. All his other friends were going on dates, for crying out loud, and _his_ weekends usually consisted of musical marathons via the best seat in town: the couch.

Well, to be fair, Blaine wasn't going out on dates either. But it didn't seem to bother _him_, so it's not like it _mattered_. He was like, creepily okay with being single.

Just another prime example of why that Anderson kid across the street was just not a normal human being. Who in their right, high school, hormonal-driven mind didn't want to be going out on _dates_? Honestly, he didn't even know why they were friends, he thought to himself in exasperation.

He stopped pacing.

Why _were_ they friends again?

He supposed it was the whole default kid's-family-moves-into-the-formerly-empty-lot-across-the-street-at-the-tender-age-of-five complex.

* * *

Kurt used to go outside _every day_ – what happened to that, by the way? – even if he had nothing to do. He would make up things to do. One day he'd be a prince fencing his arch nemesis, the next day he'd be a fairy burdened with the job of bringing his mother's flowers to bloom with a wave of his wand (okay, twig), then the next day he'd be trying to find out how many times he could skip rope without stopping (210 times for anybody who would like to know, thank you very much).

He was used to playing by himself – there was no one else in the neighborhood his age. They were all significantly older and into freaky, foreign things like "partying" and "hanging out". But they never had a moon bounce or cake and he never saw them hanging from the branches of trees like he was known to do upon occasion so he didn't really understand what all the fuss was about.

That's why it was such a big deal when another kid who was actually his age moved into the neighborhood. Even if, from the first second he laid eyes on him, Kurt despised his very _being._

He had this short, curly hair. Like one of those Brillo pads his mom used to wash the dishes with or something – but kinda longer. And from what Kurt could tell from that fateful afternoon (he'd been playing Climb Over the Porch Railing as Many Times as Possible Before Dad Catches You when the van pulled up) it wasn't, like, _genetic_ – you can thank his Mom's obsession with Jeopardy for that one – or anything.

He wasn't _blind_, you know. He could see that this short, dish-washing-material headed boy had an older brother (he looked too old to play with, which was a shame because he was a _total hunk_ – again, thank his Mom for that phrase) and _that_ boy had normal, non-curly hair. Yes, it was a little longer, but it was _normal._

That's when five-year-old Kurt knew for sure: this boy was an alien.

Well, it was a working theory anyways. He bet all that hair was to hide his secret _antennae_ which he would probably use to summon the mother ship really late at night – like nine. What a freak.

It was a big dilemma for a young kid. On one hand, they_ were_ the same age and he'd finally have someone to boss around in his make-believe games. But on the other hand could he really be friends with an _alien?_ Wouldn't that make him, like, an alien by _association?_

He just didn't know. These were questions for a much more mature boy of six, not him.

But that particular afternoon he did one of the many things his Mom told him not to do: he stared. Even with the creepy bristle-head boy smiled at him and waved from across the street, he just stood there and looked at him. Part of him wanted to wave back and call him over, but that could've just been an alien mind trick – according to the movies, they had those, you know.

Maybe he could give it a day. If he wasn't abducted into an alien spaceship by nine o'clock that night, maybe he could rethink the whole ET theory.

_Maybe._

* * *

It wasn't until about a week after the initial sighting that Kurt actually met the neighbor boy (that's what his Mom said he _had_ to call him until he learned his name because once at breakfast he accidentally called him The Alien Boy and he got in real big trouble). His Mom was being a Good Neighbor – so she said – and taking the new family across the street a homemade pie and a plate of cookies and could Kurt be a good little boy and hold the plate of cookies and be Mommy's Little Helper tomorrow?

You see, Kurt was pretty bent out of shape over the whole cookie debacle (thanks again, Jeopardy). He had helped his mom bake those cookies – which, hello, was a _lot_ of work – and, okay, maybe half the time he was knicking chocolate chips, but that's not important. It's the_ principle_ of the matter. It wasn't fair that after his Mom had taken the cookies out of oven (with her special mitt - she repeated over and over again - because ovens were dangerous and no place for five-year-olds, 'pacifically ones named Kurt) that he couldn't actually _eat _one.

He was _forbidden_ from eating them. That's what his Mom had told him after they'd cooled. She said he would get a time out if she caught him eating one. And he didn't want to go on a time out. His Mom kept on adding on a minute for every birthday he had. Do you know what that meant? He'd have to sit at the bottom of the stairs for _five whole minutes!_ Do you know what there was to do at the bottom of the stairs? Absolutely nothing! And they started hurting his butt around the four minute mark.

So, obviously, Kurt left the kitchen at that point and went to his room. The problem was he could still _smell_ the cookies from his room – and they smelled like super amazing deliciousness. Like the best cookies in the entire world. And he couldn't have any!

He was laying face down on his bed when he heard someone knocking on his door.

"Go away," he told whoever it was. No one could soothe the heartbreak of a lost cookie.

He heard his Dad say, "Kurt, don't be rude. Can I come in, please?"

Well, he supposed he'd asked _nicely_. "Okay."

"Hey, Little Guy," his Dad said, his hands behind his back. Kurt loved his Daddy so much that he didn't even mind being called Little Guy. It kind of felt good, especially when he got one of those famous bear hugs – because he _was_ a little guy, for now. "I know you're upset about the whole…cookie thing."

Kurt just rolled his eyes – a talent his parents said he'd had from a very young age – at his pillows and stayed silent.

"Why do I get the feeling you're not too excited about the new neighbors?" his Dad asked him, sitting down on the bed. "I thought you and that other kid your age would be playing together by now. In fact, I lost a bet to your mother," he chuckled.

Kurt didn't see what was so funny about the whole thing. "That kid's weird," was all he said.

"Hey now," his Dad told him, sounding a little upset. "We do _not_ call people names."

"But that's not a name," Kurt argued. "I know because Mom's been making me do those English workbooks because she says I should be getting ready for first grade over the summer and 'weird' is an adjective. A name is a noun and I'm not calling him a noun."

That made his Dad laugh even though he was only stating facts. "Well we do not call people mean adjectives. You haven't even met him yet, Kurt. I have a feeling you're going to like him."

"I _already_ don't like him," he complained. "And now_ he_ gets Mom's cookies and I don't."

"Well…" Kurt snuck a peek at his Dad who was holding up a single, big chocolate chip cookie. He made a grab for it, but it was pulled out of his reach at the last second. "I will only give you this cookie on one condition, Kurt Hummel," his Dad announced.

That's how Kurt knew it was serious business – his Dad only used his full name when he meant serious business. So he put his hand down, sat up the "right way" – though he didn't know why one way was wrong and one wasn't - and listened.

"I'll tell you what. You're going to be a good boy for me tomorrow - "

Adults always wanted him to be a "good boy". "Be a good boy and do this", "Be a good boy and do that". He didn't get it. Were they saying that all the rest of the time he was being a bad boy? Why do adults say these things?

" – And you're going to help your Mother and I take the food across the street and we're all going to be polite and introduce ourselves. You're going to be nice to that young boy across the street and you will not, for any reason, call him an alien – is that understood?"

Kurt frowned. "Mom told you about that?"

"Mom tells me _everything,_" his Dad told him, patting him on the shoulder. "Remember that. Now can I give you this cookie or not – do we have a deal?"

Kurt sighed. He_ really_ wanted that cookie. "Okay," he agreed, already forgetting what the deal was by the time the cookie landed in his hands.

It was a _really_ good cookie.

* * *

So that's how the next afternoon, Kurt found himself wearing "proper clothes" as his Mom called them and walking across the street with a plate of cookies that should've been in his tummy.

But he was a "good boy" and rang the doorbell. He didn't even roll his eyes once – he had to try really hard not to do that, so he felt that this effort alone should earn him one of those cookies.

And when Alien Kid (who turned out to be named Blaine. _Blaine_ sounded like something a kid with curly hair would be named) introduced himself and Kurt got to make sure that, even up close, his skin wasn't green or brown and his fingers didn't look like octopus legs, he even cracked a smile and said "Kurt," when his name was asked.

"How old are you, Kurt?" Mrs. Anderson asked.

"I'm five and a half," he announced proudly – you do not, _for any reason_, leave out the half. It was _important_.

Then the grown-ups did that thing where they talk about stuff no one actually cares about like "where did you move from?", "the neighborhood is lovely, isn't it?" and other stuff, but he didn't know what because he stopped listening there.

_Boooring._

So he was doing that thing where he was looking into the house, which was pretty empty. He wished they'd get invited in already so that maybe he could get a slice of pie. He hoped this people had brought whipped cream in their van because pie wasn't even pie if it didn't have whipped cream.

"Won't you come in?" the woman asked at last. "Blaine, why don't you show Kurt your room – which I hope you cleaned," she added, sounding a little too happy about it if you asked Kurt.

So the adults went off to finish their boring conversations about nothing – and taking the food with them, _drat_ – and he was left there with ET in the flesh.

"Wanna see my room?" the still-probably-an-alien boy asked. "It's upstairs."

Kurt shrugged. What else was he gonna do with no pie? "Sure."

So he followed the kid up the stairs and straight into a bedroom that had not only one bed, but two. Only one was just the mattress part of the bed and it was on the floor and the sheets were everywhere in a way that Kurt's Mom would never let him get away with.

"My brother Cooper's sleeping in my room for a few nights," Alien-Named-Blaine told him. "They're painting his room and it's all smelly and stuff. I asked my parents why he couldn't sleep in there anyways and they said he'd die or something."

"So he sleeps on the floor?"

"No, he makes me sleep on the floor."

Kurt just nodded, not really knowing what to say to that. He couldn't imagine sleeping on the floor – it must feel really weird having _everything _be taller than you. But then again, maybe he didn't have to worry about monsters under the bed gobbling up his toes when he had to get up in the middle of the night to go potty.

Blaine's room had already been painted, it seemed, and the walls were a nice blue color. Kurt's Dad had told him that when Kurt's mom had been expecting him – expecting him to do what, he wanted to know? – he had wanted to paint what would become Kurt's room blue. But his Mom didn't want to know if Kurt was gonna be a boy or a girl, so she wouldn't let him.

Whatever _that_ meant.

What it _really_ meant was that Kurt's room was a really, really you-can-barely-see-it-if-you-squint-in-the-afternoon-light kind of yellow. Because that's apparently the color you get stuck with if you're neither a boy or a girl yet.

But besides a few cardboard boxes in the corner, Blaine's room was pretty much unpacked. There was a really big, tall bookshelf that had, like, every book ever written in the history of life. That's a lot of books. And the bottom shelf had lots of board games stacked up nice and neat and Kurt saw games that he didn't have and he was _dying_ to play and he _really_ wanted to ask Blaine if they could play but he probably cheated a lot and only followed alien rules.

Also, Blaine had his own TV. This kid had _his own TV_. Kurt didn't know anyone who had their own TV – this was big.

"Wow," he said.

Blaine smiled at him and said, "Yeah. That's really Coop's old television set and he was going to throw it away, but he let me have it instead." He shrugged. "I don't really use it too much, but it's there."

Then Kurt's eye caught the edge of something else. Something that looked like a microphone.

"Is that…a karaoke machine?" he asked, feeling all jumpy inside, almost too excited to speak.

"Yup," Blaine answered.

And that was that.

* * *

So even though Kurt might have resented – okay, entirely_ loathed_ – the kid across the street at first, they became fast friends.

If you had asked Kurt in that first month whether Blaine was his friend or not, he would've laughed in your face though. He would've told you that he went over to the Andersons' every afternoon because of all the cool stuff Blaine and Cooper had or because Mrs. Anderson always gave them snacks – and the good kind, too, not some lame-o carrot sticks or something else stupid. Or how sometimes there was soda there – _SODA!_

But Kurt _supposed _that Blaine was nice enough. So even if he was an alien, at least he was a _nice_ alien – which meant Kurt could stop worrying about being sucked up from his nice, warm bed into the mother ship. He always wondered why it was called the mother ship – did it have children?

Well, Blaine was being nice when he wasn't being annoying. Which five year old boys tended to be. Lots of his older cousins told him that_ he_ was annoying sometimes, which meant it had to be true, didn't it?

Whatever. Blaine was_ okay_.

Fine, he was more than okay. He was like the best kid Kurt had ever met. Well, Kurt hadn't actually met many other kids his age – most of his cousins were either older than him or stupid, smelly babies who couldn't even talk – so maybe it wasn't saying much. But it was true.

That first summer went by in a blur. All Kurt knew was that every morning he woke up and he'd run out into the front yard and there Blaine would be, waiting for him.

They did everything. They played make believe games, they painted and helped their Moms bake stuff, they traded books so many times that they didn't even know whose were whose anymore. They played basketball on this hoop that Blaine's Dad set up because they wouldn't actually be able to toss it into a normal hoop, which was like fifty feet high – Kurt had it on good authority.

They played football and tackled one another into the ground so many times that Kurt's Mommy didn't even complain about the dirt stains anymore. They just happened all the time. On rainy days they'd watch movies together or build tents – like, _inside_ the house, it was crazy! Sometimes Kurt's parents would even let him sleep over at night. That was a huge deal – Kurt had never slept anywhere but his own house before that.

It was pretty sad when that first summer was over. Kurt thought everything was going to change after that. He actually cried about it – not that he'd ever tell Blaine that. He'd probably just get teased for it.

But, as it turns out…

They even went to the same school and everything! So during the school year they could walk to and from school together and spend recesses together and eat lunch together. Even when Blaine was being a _little_ annoying, at least Kurt wasn't alone. And it was better than taking the bus or getting dropped off by your parents – how embarrassing that must've been, Kurt thought.

The school years were good too. They got to go on field trips and stuff together and they'd sit together at assemblies. But it was the summers they both lived for.

Because why not? Both of their birthdays were in the summer – Kurt's just after school let out and Blaine's just before it went back in session. Blaine was always the first person to his birthday parties and the last one to leave. He was also the only person who was ever sent home with extra cake.

Their parents seemed to get along too, which was a good thing for the both of them. That meant lots of summer barbeques. Kurt's mouth would always water just thinking about them: those long summer days where his Dad would stand at the barbeque all afternoon, grilling hotdogs, sausages, and burgers. And Blaine's parents would bring more food like corn and macaroni salad; there'd be chips and soda and – if it were at Blaine's house – they'd go swimming until their eyes turned red and their fingers started looking like raisins and their stomachs felt like they'd never be full no matter how much they ate.

The best part was that there didn't even have to be a holiday or a special occasion for it. Things like that happened just because they _felt _like it. The holidays were good too though.

In Kurt's opinion, Christmas was nice and gave everyone this warm, fuzzy feeling and Thanksgiving was all about family, but there was good food guaranteed. But even better than those two days, even better than Easter when the Easter Bunny would leave his basket full of candies and little toys – he still didn't know why the Easter Bunny had eggs. If it had eggs, why wasn't it the Easter Chicken? - and even better than Valentine's Day (which, again, meant free candy), was the Fourth of July.

He couldn't explain it, not as a kid and not as an almost-adult either. But there was something about that extra-long summer day when the whole sky lit up at night that just made him…_happy_. He was pretty sure there was something at least a _little_ bit magical about it. He just always felt like the whole country was staring up at the sky. He didn't even know what fireworks had to do with independence, but they were _amazing._

And his Mom would bake this really cool cake with blueberries in the upper left hand corner and with red stripes made of strawberry and white stripes of frosting. He _lived_ for that flag cake.

He'd get to spend the entire day with Blaine, there'd be another barbeque – this one bigger and with lots more food and decorations than the others – and they'd all walk to the park together in the evening.

It was just down the street and it was huge with lots of grass and stuff, but you had to get there early for "good seats" as Kurt's Dad put it. Whatever, not like he cared. As the adults set up the chairs and stuff, he and Blaine would run off towards the playground and climb on the monkey bars or walk up the slide like they weren't supposed to. Or they'd lie on their stomachs on the swings and stretch out their arms really far and it'd almost be like they were actually flying!

And the really cool part about it was they were doing it all at night. Things just felt different at night. More official. They'd always run back from the playground to find their parents and he and Blaine would get their own blanket to themselves, laid out on the ground. Then they'd wrestle or talk or look at the stars until the fireworks started. They even got candy – he didn't know why but they did. Who cares, does anyone need a reason for candy? It's candy!

Then they'd get to wave around those sparkler things and it'd be like they were waving wands – wands! Kurt liked to spell out things with his sparkler, like his name and stuff. Then he and Blaine would chase one another like maniacs with their sparklers even when their parents yelled at them not to and chased after _them_. It was always pretty funny and they'd end up in a big pile with burnt-out sparklers.

After that, when it was finally time, they'd watch as fireworks lit up the sky, with booms that were so big that Kurt was sure the entire world could feel the earth moving beneath them. And lights so bright, he could feel his eyes just growing bigger trying to take it all in. There were fireworks that drizzled down in the pitch black sky like falling stars, sizzling into nothingness as they fell to the earth.

Of course, there was always this big finale where it seemed like whoever was in charge of setting off the fireworks grew impatient and just blew them all off at once until it was so bright, it was almost like the sun was out at night and so loud that Kurt had to cover Blaine's ears and vice versa – just to make sure they wouldn't fall off like their parents always told them when they were listening to music really, really loudly. Their ears, you know.

Yeah, summers were the best.

And they had five perfect summers together. Until the summer Kurt turned 10 – about two days after that, in fact.

When Sebastian moved into town.

* * *

Kurt had learned a lot in five years. He was a more mature, grown up human being. He was at the pinnacle age of ten – very smart and full of sophistication – the first age with not one, but _two_ numbers. He was on the cusp of pre-teenage-dom. It was a big deal.

He was old enough to finally admit that maybe when Blaine first moved into town, he'd judged him too harshly; and to say that he'd hated him was a huge mistake and lie.

Because he had never in his _life_ hated someone the way he hated Sebastian Smythe.

He didn't even like his last name. When the Smythes took the empty house on the corner of the street he and Blaine had shared their entire life, he didn't think too much of it. That was before he knew that they housed the devil himself. And when they erected their mailbox that read "The Smythes" on the side, he wondered why they couldn't just write their dang name as _Smith_. But no, they had to be the _Smythes,_ and their son had to be an _asshole_.

Okay, even at ten he wasn't allowed to say words like "asshole", but that didn't mean he couldn't _think_ them.

Maybe if it had been a different day under different circumstances, he might've tolerated Sebastian quietly. But it just so happened that on _that day_ in particular, he and Blaine were going to have a picnic in his backyard. Then they were going to put up a tent – an _actual_ tent, they had graduated to those now – and stay up all night and make s'mores, try to freak one another out. You know, camp-like activities.

And they'd done this every year since the beginning of time. Fine, since they were five, but it might as well have been since the beginning of time because Kurt didn't remember much from before that point.

So on that particular gray morning – uncharacteristic showers which should've probably been a sign that something was up with the universe - when Kurt stepped out into his front yard already thinking about the packed picnic basket sitting on his kitchen table, he was feeling pretty happy. But instead of seeing Blaine perched on his porch railing or hanging from the wooden awning of the roof – as was the sight that normally greeted him – he saw Blaine and a stranger already covered in mud.

And they were playing football. In a front yard where Kurt and Blaine had played football a million times.

He stopped in his tracks, halfway out the door. He'd heard the expression "like a slap in the face" a thousand times, but this was the first time he understood that phrase. He felt his cheeks growing warmer, just like after a hand ricocheted off skin, and he felt like he'd done something massively wrong.

But he hadn't done anything wrong – Blaine was the one betraying him!

He tugged nervously on the strings of his hoodie as he heard a distinctive noise: Blaine's laugh, echoing straight to him from across the street as he tried to wrestle out of the other kid's arms.

That was it, he had to say something _now_.

"Blaine!" he called, marching out of his yard and right across the street without even looking both ways. "What's going on?" He ignored the other kid on purpose.

Blaine was panting and still laughing as he clapped a hand on mystery kid's shoulder. "I was playing catch with Coop earlier, but he had to go to work. So I was waiting for you to come over and I was tossing the ball to myself – which was kind of not easy- and Seb here saw me so he came over to play with me. Just while I waited for you," he said. He noticed all the dirt at that point. "Guess we got carried away."

"_Seb?_" Kurt repeated, feeling himself glare at the other mud-caked boy. He knew it wasn't polite, but he didn't really feel very polite.

"Sebastian," the other boy corrected him smugly, sticking out a hand. "Sebastian Smythe."

Like only Blaine was worthy enough to call him Seb. Well "Seb" or "Sebastian", it was still a stupid name in Kurt's opinion. He sounded like a jerk.

He looked at the hand and back at its owner, but he didn't shake it. Then he turned back to Blaine. "How are you supposed to come over for our picnic looking like that?" he wanted to know.

Blaine looked a little bit ashamed of himself (finally) at that point. "I guess I could change and wash up," he offered with a shrug.

Kurt was going to tell him to make it snappy when Sebastian cut in with, "Wait, wait, wait. You two are having a picnic together? What, are you having a tea party, too? Gonna take a break to play with some dolls?"

"We stopped the tea parties when we were seven," Kurt announced proudly. Duh, this was old news.

Apparently that was the wrong answer, too.

Sebastian backed away and looked at him strangely. "Are you a girl or something? What the heck?"

That hurt Kurt's feelings, but he looked automatically to Blaine for help.

"Ummm…" Blaine mumbled.

"Because having a picnic is a pretty girly thing to do," Sebastian went on. "Blaine and I were going to play a football game or two and then head over to my house to play soccer. We have a net in the backyard and everything."

Kurt looked back to Blaine, who was staring at the ground. "But what about our plans?" he asked. "Don't you wanna come over?"

Blaine looked at Sebastian, who gave him a little nod like 'Go on, let him have it.'

And, oh boy, did Blaine let him have it

"I don't know, Kurt, the camp out's a little overrated," he said. "I mean we do it every year – and I like it, don't get me wrong – but if it's so important to you, it can wait another day. I kind of promised Seb we'd have a sports marathon to see who's the best all-around athlete."

"Which would be me," Sebastian interjected.

"No, _me_," Blaine said with a laugh, shoving the new neighbor kid. "But, yeah," he said to Kurt. "We can do it some other time."

"But you promised me you'd come over_ first_," Kurt pointed out.

"Maybe you could play with us," Blaine suggested. But then he caught Sebastian shaking his head no. "Or not?" he asked aloud.

"No," Sebastian answered. "Sorry, Kurt. No offense or anything, but you seem like kind of a girl. And girls can't play football. That's scientific fact."

"I'm _not_ a girl!" Kurt shouted. "And I've played football before. Blaine, tell him!"

"Yeah, we play together all the time - "

"Any guy who would rather play dress up and have tea time than play sports isn't a guy at all," Sebastian pronounced. "It's up to you, Blaine."

Kurt looked to his so-called best friend to back him up. He expected Blaine to tell Sebastian sorry, but Kurt was his best friend in the whole world and no new neighbor kid with a fancy soccer net would stop that from being true and good day to him. But Blaine didn't say any of that stuff. He just looked from one boy to the other and bounced the football in his hands nervously.

"I think…I'm going to play sports today, Kurt," he said.

"No girls allowed," Sebastian added, shoving Kurt in the shoulder.

That was when Kurt burst into tears and ran home.

* * *

Kurt's Dad didn't get upset very often. In fact, the only time he ever yelled was when whatever sports team that was in season was losing. Then he got _really_ angry. Kurt got the feeling that maybe this was the only time he let himself get angry - like _yelling_ angry. It must take lots of effort to be calm all the time.

The only other time Kurt had ever seen his dad get upset was when…well.

Anyways, that's why Kurt was mildly surprised when his Dad burst into his room without so much as knocking. That was just something that didn't happen.

"Kurt, what's wr - " He stopped after getting a good look at him.

Kurt looked up from the corner he'd tucked himself into and wiped his nose, which was running in the really gross way that couldn't be stopped by all the sniffling in the world.

"S-Sorry," he tried to say, nearly biting his tongue off in the process. Why was it so hard to talk when you were crying?

He didn't even know what he was apologizing for, but it seemed like he should. He felt like he'd done something wrong again.

"Tell me what happened," his Dad ordered, sitting down on his bed.

So Kurt told him everything. Not about the picnic and camping stuff because his Dad already knew that on account of he helped Kurt pack the basket and set up the tent. But he told him the other part about muddy, stupid-faced Sebastian up to all the "girl" parts and then he was crying again and he couldn't talk.

"Who is this kid?" his Dad burst out. "I'm going to go have a talk with his parents."

"No, don't!" Kurt begged, grabbing onto his Dad's sleeve. "Blaine's friends with him already and he'll hate me if you do that."

"Well we have to do something, Kiddo," his Dad told him. "We can't just let him get away with that.

Kurt smiled a little bit at how his Daddy said "we".

"You could go kick that boob's butt," he suggested.

"Hey," he Dad said sternly before breaking and laughing. "Where'd you learn language like that?"

"Television."

"Yeah, well, maybe I should mind what you watch from now on," he joked. "But in all seriousness, Kurt, violence isn't the answer. Real men – and women, for that matter – use their words."

"Well I give up then," Kurt complained. "Sebastian can have Blaine as his best friend – I'll just find a new one."

"You can have more than one best friend you know, buddy."

Kurt screwed up his face the way he did when he thought a new thought. He didn't really understand though.

"If you're trying to tell me to be the bigger person and go make nice with Snob-bastian Smythe, Dad, I won't do it."

"No, of course not," his Dad said as if this wasn't the point he was trying to make at all. It probably was. "Not until you teach him a lesson first."

"Huh? What lesson?

"You teach him that anybody can do anything. Girls can play football, boys can have tea parties – and everything in between. And you can do whatever he does better, if you put your mind to it."

He wiped Kurt's face with his big hand and pulled him up to his feet.

"Fine," he mumbled. "But can I at least hit him?"

"I'm going on record saying that I do not, in any way, shape, or form endorse that kind of behavior, and if I catch you hitting anyone else's kid, I'll have to ground you. _But,_ after you go back out there, I'm going to go into the kitchen and make a big pot of coffee. So I won't be by the front window for at least ten minutes. I'm _just_ saying."

Kurt smiled to himself. "Okay, I'll go back outside," he said.

"I'm sorry, I can't hear you," his Dad shouted, pulling him into a huge bear hug – the kind where he lifted Kurt off the floor and tickled his sides until he was screaming with laughter.

"Okay! Okay, okay!" Kurt giggled. "I will!"

"Just try not to hurt him _too_ much," his Dad joked after he'd put Kurt down.

"I promise," Kurt yelled as he ran for the door.

"Liar!"

He just laughed to himself as he caught the door before it slammed.

Then he walked right up to Sebastian Smythe, who was already calling out taunts to him as soon as his sneakers hit the street.

"Look who it is," he said loudly, elbowing Blaine in the ribs. "If it isn't fairy princess crybaby come back to invite you to his tea party."

Blaine laughed, looking a little uncomfortable. But he still laughed.

That's when Kurt pulled his hand back and punched Sebastian square in the face with all the force his lanky, ten-year old body could pack. Then while Sebastian took a step backwards, Kurt pushed his chest, _hard,_ causing him to fall roughly to the ground.

"I _can_ play football," Kurt announced, crossing his arms as he stood over the other boy. "And I can have picnics after I _beat_ you if I want to. Unless you're too scared to play with me."

Sebastian touched a hand to his lip and examined it, his fingers pulled away trailing blood. Then the weirdest thing happened.

He _smiled_.

And a flash of something that looked mighty like approval crossed his face. Then he nodded his head and got up, brushing his shorts off.

"Okay," he said with a grin Kurt didn't quite trust yet. "Let's play."

* * *

So it turned out that Sebastian wasn't so bad – when he was on the ground, that was. Which Kurt made sure of all that first day.

When they were done basically throttling one another into the dirt all across Blaine's yard, Sebastian actually admitted he might've been wrong.

"Maybe a picnic's not such a bad idea," he said. "I'm kinda hungry now."

"Yeah, well it was kind of a two person plan," Kurt told him in a way that really sounded like "_run along now_".

"Nah, you guys always pack too much food anyways," Blaine protested. _Traitor_. "It'll be fun."

Kurt kicked a particularly thick clump of dirt. He didn't want to give in, but it seemed like he had no choice.

And that's how Sebastian morphed what once was two into three.

* * *

Just like that, there was one more seat to save at the lunch tables, one more snack to put out after school, one more player in each game, one more birthday gift to plan. Sebastian wasn't Kurt's favorite person and sometimes he said dumb things or made Blaine say dumb things, but he was tolerable.

He was always the one doing reckless things, like sneaking beers when they were fourteen from his Dad's secret stash in the fridge, or picking a fight with other kids in school. He always had smart things to say to their teachers, so he got sent to the office a lot, and he was always bringing discord into the group in general.

But even though they fought a lot, it worked. Blaine was the designated mediator. He'd make sure things didn't get too heated, and always seemed to be between Kurt and Seb – physically that is. Like a personal barrier. Sitting, standing, laying between them, it didn't matter.

When it was just the two of them, when Blaine had a dentist appointment or something, it wasn't uncomfortable; there was just more of an effort to be polite. They'd grown desensitized to one another's presence, so the tension had fizzled down somewhere between day one and the middle of seventh grade, but there was still the occasional shouting match.

Maybe what bugged Kurt was that Sebastian was always challenging him. "I bet you can't do this," "I bet you're too scared to do that," "What would _really_ make you cool was if you did _this_, Kurt." And the list went on and on. Sometimes Kurt would listen without really listening and sometimes he'd tell Sebastian to shut the hell up (out of earshot of parents, of course).

So when they were alone together with no mediator, stupid things happened. Like that one time Sebastian dared Kurt to scale the roof of his own house (a trip to the hospital was involved), or the other time when Kurt dared Sebastian to pick up ten girls in ten minutes and he ended up getting slapped in the face repeatedly. They embarked on eating contests that ended up with both of them puking in the bushes or making up really dangerous obstacle courses that neither could get through without injuring themselves in some way.

Or they'd just end up yelling at each other because they were both in a bad mood.

That ended up happened more often than not.

It was kind of refreshing, actually. Because Kurt's life, where his Dad or Blaine were concerned, was all about keeping calm and compromising. But he wasn't afraid to yell at Sebastian, because Sebastian could take it. He could take it, transform it, and throw it right back at him. Which was good.

But that's just the way they were. It couldn't be helped, so neither of them really took it to heart. What they fought over one day was forgotten the next, or else there would've been no way that they could've functioned within ten feet of one another.

As they went through middle school, Kurt started to put his finger on the problem. The problem was that Sebastian was kind of…attractive? In an intimidating, totally _not_ okay way.

Out of all three of them, he never went through an "awkward" phased. He always knew how to cut his hair and which clothes to wear and not wear. And he was so dang confident, it was disgusting. But infectious. Like you kind of wanted to be like him but without the much-needed attitude adjustment aspect of his personality.

Thanks to an early exposure to the film "The Notebook" and contemporary romance novels courtesy of the local library, none of this really alarmed Kurt – that he found Sebastian attractive or anything. He'd known from the beginning that he'd much rather kiss Ryan Gosling than Rachel McAdams. No offense to her boobs, or whatever, they just didn't interest him.

So when he realized that Sebastian was kind of…hot, it was only unsettling in the sense that he hated Seb's guts. Even after all these years and even if they were two cogs of a three-spoked wheel, he couldn't just be _okay _with Sebastian Smythe. Especially not in…_that_ sense. Yuck.

Most of the time, he just ignored it, to be honest. Because one day in the eighth grade, his Dad sat him down and gave him a very, _very_ vague "birds and bees" pep talk. It wasn't even "The Bird and the Bees"; it should've been called "_Intro_ to the Eggs and the Hive". But basically, he was told that he'd be…seeing people in a different light. So it was _normal_ to notice a friend's hotness right?

That's how he took it anyways.

If anything, Seb's unruly good looks just gave Kurt something else to get pissed off about when Sebastian was around. Sometimes Sebastian would catch him staring when they were talking on Kurt's porch steps and Kurt would automatically snap, "Shut _up_."

For no reason. Like just looking at him and admitting these facts to himself made him angry.

Suffice to say those moments sparked a lot of unnecessary arguments. But still Kurt said nothing to anyone and did nothing. He didn't even _think_ of Sebastian in that way, he'd tell himself. It was like looking at a model spread in a magazine – pretty to look at, not allowed to touch.

And that was how he made it through middle school. Well _almost_ all the way through.

* * *

In eighth grade, Rachel Berry was having her first ever unsupervised boy-girl party. Apparently her Dads were going to be out of town and at the ripe age of thirteen (she was a fall baby), they decided now was a good time to see if they could trust her alone at home in the house or not.

Or not, as it would turn out.

As mentioned earlier, it didn't really interest Kurt, but it interested everyone else: including Blaine and Sebastian.

And, where Seb and Blaine went, Kurt went too.

So on a Saturday evening, on a particularly cold February weekend, that's how Kurt found himself held hostage in Rachel Berry's basement.

It was actually kind of a sham of a party. There was nothing but cold pizza to eat and hardly anything to drink. There wasn't really anything to do at first but stand around in little bunches and stare down the opposite sex – or whatever it was that people do at boy-girl parties.

But it had been raining off and on since Thursday afternoon and while they were down there, it began storming. Fiercely. Lights flickered and then went out and there was a lot of screaming and probably-not-accidental groping going on because of it from all sides. Until someone clicked on a lighter they had (for reasons Kurt still wouldn't understand years later) and helped Rachel find the emergency stash of candles.

The candles were placed all around the room and from then on out the vibe seemed to relax and people started acting more casually. Why, Kurt didn't know, but he guessed that candles seemed to have that affect on people.

So that's how everyone ended up in a big circle on the ground and someone conjured up an empty soda bottle.

Really, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to predict what happened next in a room full of desperately hormonal teens. Put two and two together, people.

In the mad rush of people who hadn't been sitting down before running to the circle to join in at the last minute, Kurt and Blaine ended up on one side of the circle and Sebastian ended up a good fifteen people away, almost on the complete other side.

But he couldn't get up and move because people were already chanting for the first spin and everyone was super pumped up about the possibility of locking braces with each other or exchanging pizza-flavored spit or whatever. So he just threw Kurt and Blaine a '_this is so stupid_' look.

"I don't think this is a really good idea," Kurt whispered to Blaine. "It's like why would I want to be forced to kiss someone – it seems like an attack on my right to chose whether I want to or not."

"You don't _have_ to kiss anyone," Blaine reasoned. "You could just say no."

"Yeah right," Kurt scoffed. "And become the laughing stock of the eighth grade class? This reputation is going to hold over into _high school_, Blaine. I don't want to be that one prick who wouldn't kiss anyone in Spin-the-Bottle."

"Then stop complaining," Blaine told him. "Chances are the bottle won't land on you. Look how many of us there are. I bet it won't even stop in your direction."

And for the first excruciating twenty-five minutes of the game, Blaine was right. But that was about as long as his luck lasted.

Spin-the-Bottle is such a weird game in the first place, Kurt thought. Every time the bottle head would whiz past his folded legs, his stomach would tighten – like he was excited at the prospect of being kissed and simultaneously terrified that it'd land on him, because, hello, he didn't want his first kiss to be a public event!

But still, he got all aflutter each spin all the same, because it was just the_ hope_ that someone else's lips would actually touch his that was so poignant. He wanted to get it over with already – he wanted to know if all those movies and books and songs were true or not. Was kissing really as magical as everyone said it was? It had to be_ something_ if people kept dedicated novels and screenplays and choruses to it. Something _good_ right?

He just needed to _know_.

So even if it was someone he wasn't even remotely attracted to who was spinning the bottle, he still had that little twinge of anticipation. Maybe being forced to kiss someone wouldn't be so bad, he thought to himself. If he waited around forever for someone to actually _want_ to kiss him (someone _he_ wanted to want to kiss him, that is) he might go years unkissed. He might be a mouth-virgin when he was eighteen.

_Eighteen._

That just could not happen; it had to be tonight. The circle was big though, and his own turn wouldn't be for a while, so while other people crawled to the center of the circle to put on a show (seriously, each turn lasted several minutes as people showed off their, er, _technique_), he looked around wondering who he'd be okay with kissing.

When his eyes fell on Sebastian, he dropped the thought immediately and instead pretended to be engrossed with whoever was kissing whom. It was kind of hard to tell though, what with all the hair and incessant groping.

There was a total double standard in this game though, Kurt noticed. If a girl spun the bottle and landed on another girl, everyone would cheer and catcall and then those two girls would laugh like "_Oh, what the hell?_" and go put on a show that drove all the guys crazy. Seriously, he could literally see them drooling with lust.

So even if girls didn't like girls it was _okay_ for them to kiss girls? Because that made them hot and sexy and wild. How wrong was that? But whenever a guy spun the bottle and it landed on a guy, everyone would laugh and there'd be choruses of "ewww", and then the guy would re-spin.

This game was too much of a hassle! If he spun and landed on a guy, he'd have to spin again and then it'd land on a girl and he'd have to kiss a girl who he really, really didn't want to kiss. Ever. How was he ever supposed to learn how boy's lips tasted?

Ugh, this blew. He just wanted to go home. Maybe no one would notice him sneaking out of the circle. It was pretty dark, save the glow of the candles, so it was possible, right? He was about to subtly drag his butt away from the circumference when a commotion broke out. There were protests all around. Were they mutinying on him for trying to leave?

Turns out, no, that was not the case. It was the next person's turn and they _refused_ to spin. Kurt looked around to see who it was in question (because everyone was calling out their opinion, so it was kind of confusing) to see that it was…Sebastian?

No, that couldn't be. Seb was the biggest player Kurt knew. He'd never turn down free kissing. He wouldn't even have to work for it this time – just a mere flick of his wrist and he'd be allowed – no _encouraged_ - to kiss his next victim, er…person.

"I don't feel too well," Sebastian was saying. He let out a pathetically pathetic cough that sounded in no way real. "I wouldn't want anyone to catch anything because of me."

"Shut up and spin the bottle, Seb," a girl Kurt was sure was Jennifer shouted. Only _everyone_ knew that she was seriously crushing on him. She was probably stacking the odds of actually getting him in a liplock.

"Fine, fine!" Sebastian said, pushing himself off the floor to kneel. He had that tone of voice that said he was really only doing this to get everyone to shut up. Kurt had been on the other end of that tone constantly, so he knew. "Here goes nothing."

That was the moment when Kurt dared to think that all those times he'd imagined that things could actually happen between the two of them without upsetting the entire balance of the world (hey, it was a big thought, okay) might _actually_ happen. Which is a thought he _really_ didn't want to be having right then because it'd probably end in disappointment, than an overanalyzation of the disappointment in days to come, then mass hoards of confusion, which would eventually lead to him to separating himself from the group; and if he lost his best friends he'd spiral downwards into a horrifying depression and end up being one of those people who tries to drown themselves in the leftover milk in their cereal bowl.

So basically he could not be thinking that – at all. Ever.

But he was thinking it. And goddamn Sebastian for being so friggen cocky and giving the bottle an unnecessarily violent spin so that it was whirling out of control, all over the expanse of the circle. People were pulling their feet out of the way so as not to interrupt its rapid rotations. It spun around seven, eight, no, nine times!

Then, Kurt was pretty sure he was experiencing what all the TV shows described to be a heart attack. Or asphyxiation, because he sure as hell wasn't breathing. He could feel his heartbeat in his ears and in his chest, but he couldn't feel the air and blood it was supposed to be providing him at all.

Because the bottle had landed on him.

Well, okay, not really on him. It was actually pointing right between him and Blaine, to be technically correct. Like, exactly between them – it was creepy. It wasn't leaning more towards him or more towards Blaine, it was cutting the distance precisely in half. He and Blaine exchanged panicked looks.

A lot of things happened at once. Lots of whispering broke out because everyone knew that these three guys were best friends, so it seemed like a hot topic. Kurt couldn't decide which one he wanted more: for Seb to kiss him or for Blaine and Seb to kiss. Both of these were disturbing thoughts because they made his unhelpful heart beat a little faster and his mind race in a really good (read: really _bad_) way.

He didn't know which would be better. He tried to physically shut his mind's door on that one (because Seb would have to re-spin, wouldn't he?), but it was too late because he was thinking about what it'd be like to be watching his two best friends make out, essentially. It was really an upsettingly hot train of thought, and he let out a little groan before catching himself.

There were already shouts of protests and calls to re-spin already, but Sebastian just kind of sat there on heels and looked back and forth between Blaine and Kurt.

"Rules are rules," was all he said with a shrug, as if none of this were a problem at all.

Then he actually reached over for the bottle and nudged it slightly to the left.

…To point directly at Kurt.

More shouting. People leaning in to see what would happen. Moving the bottle was like publicly announcing that he wanted to kiss Kurt. That, in fact, given the choice between Blaine and Kurt – a completely unbiased, even choice – he would choose Kurt.

This was bad. This was very, _very_ bad.

Kurt felt himself starting to panic. He looked to Blaine, the famous mediator, for help, but all he received was a look as confused as the one he was probably wearing. He turned back to Seb, who was in the center of the circle now, waiting for Kurt to abide by the rules that somehow mattered now (come on, didn't moving the bottle kind of make the rules seem moot?).

He was already shaking his head and backing away. But then Seb did the craziest thing: winked at him and crawled over on all fours! As if he went around kissing guys – and what's more, his best friends – every day of his life!

Well, maybe he did. Kurt admitted he didn't pretend to know every faucet of Sebastian's private life, so that very could well be a possibility (about the kissing guys, not his best friends – but maybe now that would be a thing? No, stop it). The point was that this was very well going to happen and he didn't know how to stop it – or if he really even wanted to.

"No," he managed to say quickly. "I don't think we should - "

But then he couldn't speak because Sebastian had grabbed the collar of his jacket and Kurt couldn't hear anything because the blood that had been (supposedly) pumping through his veins this whole time went rushing to his ears (was that the roaring sound that seemed so loud and yet silenced everything at the same time?) and people were saying things again.

Only he was ignorant to all that because Sebastian's mouth was on his.

Repeat: SEBASTIAN'S MOUTH WAS ON HIS.

And they were kissing – like, unless that wasn't clear.

But not like in the movies. Because in the movies there was always this pause that was almost tangible before the actual mouth to mouth occurrence. There would be this moment where they made it clear by telepathically telling one another, "I'm going to kiss you now, alright?"

Then maybe they'd do that whole fateful studying of the lips song-and-dance, where they assess whether it's a-okay to finally, at last go in for the big moment. Maybe one of them would smile nervously or maybe they'd just dive right in – depended on the plot, really. They'd take each other in their arms and…

The kiss in the movies would always be like a discovery. Like each passing second only confirmed the connection between the two characters and each touch was a completely new realization. The first kiss, especially, was always just this small, tentative, quick thing, which looked like it barely felt like anything, much less counted as anything. Then the two people might pull apart a little, pause, grin at one another like, "yeah, that just happened," and go in for the second kiss.

And the second kiss was always like the first _real_ kiss. There'd be cheek-cupping and hair grabbing involved. Their eyes would close and you could almost pinpoint the moment when they stopped thinking "I'm kissing this person!" to just actually _enjoying_ the kissing. The music would swell and the two people would move closer, kissing more desperately now like they were going for a medal (and you were supposed to believe this was their first kiss – yeah right, Hollywood) and the camera would pan out to the ending credits.

That's how it was supposed to be! He'd seen in a million times – there was a formula to these sorts of things. The nervousness, the hesitation, the first kiss being like a question and the second being the answer. This was science! If he could give first kisses a color, they'd be, like…pink. A light pink that bloomed into a red, if you were lucky.

This kiss? This kiss wasn't pink and it _definitely_ wasn't red. This kiss hurtled directly past red and shot straight to _crimson_.

He didn't even have a second to compose himself or prepare himself for what could've potentially been the biggest disaster in the history of mankind. He had no time to think about what his mouth was doing because Seb's was kind of doing all the work and okay, that felt _way _too good to be a first kiss.

Like it shouldn't be legal for him to have had all these worries in years past about what it would feel like or if his breath would smell bad or how would he breathe or where would he put his hands. It was like none of that mattered anymore because it was _happening_ and it felt _good._ It was almost like feeling someone else _breathe_ into you, sharing your lungs' burden and making it that much easier to just…exist.

Exist closer to the earth than you've ever been in your entire life. Which is a silly thing to say because you think yourself a very real person and you think your life to have some kind of affect in the world's cycles, or whatever. But it's like…in that moment, you're completely grounded and everything you've been taught about how the world _should_ be and how _people_ should be just leaves your mind completely and there's nothing left to do but _be_. There's no other choice than to _do_ and to _feel _and to _comply_.

And that's all that was happening when Sebastian was kissing him. Like really, _really_, honest-to-God kissing him. His fingers were resting on Kurt's neck and Kurt could just _taste_ him. And it was weird because he'd never given any thought whatsoever to what Sebastian would taste like, and yet it was exactly as he'd expected it to be. It was just _him_ and even though it was brand new to Kurt, it still felt like something he'd known all along, maybe since day one.

For years, he'd read novels that described the heroines as "melting" in the arms of their lovers (he was not calling Sebastian his lover – he did not just associate him with that!) and he'd always laughed and shut the book thinking, "no one _melts_ in this world."

Well it turns out that people do, in fact, melt. Because he was melting. He was pretty sure – like 99.9% positive – that there were no longer any bones in his body, because it wasn't possible for him to be a solid existence when his brain felt so mushy. He couldn't even support himself – he'd been kind of backing away on his knees and now his hands were just resting in Seb's lap and he was completely leaning into him and letting things be done to him.

Like interesting mouth things and tongue things. Was there some kind of secret kissing school that Sebastian attended? A kissing textbook maybe, with lessons on how to do this properly? Because he didn't even know there _was_ a correct way to kiss, but if there were, this was certainly the way to do it.

Sebastian kind of did this thing where he drew Kurt's bottom lip into his mouth and did something between a nibble and massaging it with his teeth – giving Kurt this feeling he hadn't even known _existed_ before. And, _oh_, he pressed all these open mouthed kisses into him, kind of coaxing him to tilt his head back and part his lips so that their tongues were touching. Not in an overwhelming way either; just in a way that was just enough to make Kurt feel the velvet-y pressure and crave _more_ – like a lot more. Until it got to the point where he was sitting back on his heels and pulling Seb by the hips towards _him_. What – where the hell did _that_ come from, he wanted to know?

There was lots of hollering and murmuring going around (mostly female hollering, he noted), but he couldn't bring himself to stop – he had just begun! Or had he? Did time pass more quickly when kissing? If it did, he wanted to know why kissing wasn't mandatory at school.

Whatever, he just liked the feeling of Sebastian pressing against him really closely, but still wanting him much closer – even though there wasn't really any space left between them. And he liked how Sebastian's hands had minds of their own and went from pressing against his neck to holding his head firmly between them or running down his back – making him flex his toes in his shoes.

And he loved the little noise Seb's lips would make as they meshed together and separated from his. He loved not having to think at all about anything and just letting it be done to him. He loved how it felt and he just needed, needed, _needed,_ and it seemed like Sebastian could just read him and always knew where to go next, what to do after that, to keep him positively thrumming. Like a game.

But suddenly he heard Rachel yelling, "Okay, game over! Game over! I said scoot!" and he wanted to cry. No! Game _not_ over! Game just getting interesting! And, oh no, now his thoughts were starting to sound like a caveman's. Maybe they _should_ stop now.

So, it wasn't easy – like, at _all_ – but the next time Sebastian's mouth moved to close over his, he moved just a centimeter back so that his lips met nothing but air. And, oh no, that was kind of hot to see the way Sebastian's face had been and how genuinely disoriented he seemed to be when Kurt's mouth wasn't just _there_ anymore. How his mouth kind of hung open and his eyes were fixed on Kurt's lips like they were a life support and the way he was _breathing_…

Kurt kind of pushed him away and sat further back on his heels.

Okay, how to proceed now that that had…_happened_.

He wanted to say something witty, like a joke about how maybe Sebastian wasn't so useless after all. But somehow that seemed misleading and he really didn't want to be overthinking anything when his brain was still catching up to his body.

He felt someone's hand grabbing his and pulling him to his feet.

Blaine.

_Right_, Blaine was still there. People were still there. People who had just witnessed that entire thing and wow, okay, Kurt certainly had never thought to have his first kiss on display, much less (basically) his first make-out session.

But oddly enough he didn't feel embarrassed. He just felt a little light headed and his lips felt a little…kissed. Possibly red. Possibly who cares?

Then Sebastian stood up and all three of them were kind of just looking at one another like, "_What now?_" Because the whole situation was just disastrous. Sebastian had basically chosen between them, but for a second he could've kissed Blaine if he'd wanted to (okay, Kurt was _really_ not going to think about that right now), but he chose _Kurt_. And now what? They were supposed to slug one another's shoulders and act like it never happened?

Blaine looked like he wanted to say something, but didn't, and Seb was looking back and forth between Kurt and the floor.

So Kurt just wiped his mouth – yeah, wow, smooth move there, drawing attention to that part of his body – and nodded awkwardly to himself.

"I'm going home," he announced suddenly, unable to stand it anymore, and he turned to the basement stairs and basically fled.

"Wait!" someone called after him. "But the rain - "

Well Kurt didn't get to hear anything about the rain, because he was already walking out of the house as fast as his feet could carry him, and someone was following him. Maybe if it was Sebastian they could do a little more kissing? No, bad brain, _no_, Kurt told himself.

It was Blaine anyways.

Blaine followed him outside and thankfully it was only drizzling, so walking home wouldn't be too big of a deal if they walked quickly.

Kurt pulled his hood over his head and stomped down the driveway, turning roughly in the direction of his house and stuffed his hands in his pockets, determined to stay quiet.

"So," Blaine began, laughing a little. Though Kurt wasn't sure what was so entertaining. "What was all that?"

"What do you mean?" Kurt asked as if he hadn't just gotten the life kissed out of him by his other best friend. People did that all the time, didn't they?

"Um, well, that was some…serious lip action," was what Blaine settled for saying. "Between you and Sebastian," he clarified. Like Kurt didn't know.

"It was Spin-the-Bottle. I didn't really have much of a choice," Kurt shot back.

Blaine shrugged. "Well you kind of did. But I think you made your choice, don't you?"

Kurt stopped in his tracks, turning to face his oldest friend. "Blaine, what the hell are you talking about?"

More shrugging. "I don't know. I mean, are things going to change now? Are you and Sebastian like…a thing?"

Kurt laughed. It couldn't even qualify as laughing because he was cackling like an evil witch. This assumption couldn't have been further from the truth. "No way in _hell_ is that happening," he answered, giving Blaine a look. "It was just Spin-the-Bottle, Blaine!"

"So you don't like him?"

He scoffed at that. "_No_," he lied. Half-lied, really. Okay, three quarters lied – whatever.

"Well, I mean, I had no idea you liked…Or he liked…" Blaine trailed off, sounding really weird to him as he tried to talk about all this.

"I don't," Kurt lied again.

He didn't know why. It's not like it would be a big deal after all that to just say, "Hey, Blaine, I like guys. But that doesn't mean that when we play football, I'm going to be mesmerized by your ass in my face – I have self control, capiche?" But he just didn't.

Maybe it's because technically it _had_ been just a game of Spin-the-Bottle so he could still get away with it. Until High School, at the least. Now was just not the time. Because if he admitted it after _that_ display, it'd just lead to more questions he couldn't answer yet.

"Yeah, well I guess it's not important anyways," Blaine said as they continued to trudge along. Was it just Kurt or did he sound almost…disappointed? "I saw Jennifer running to catch Seb after the game anyways and practically shoving her tongue down his throat."

Kurt cringed. "You mean when you left they were kissing?"

Blaine nodded. "So I guess he's not…"

" – Yeah, I guess," Kurt finished for him a little too quickly.

"Yeah, but it's okay. Because you and him?" Blaine shook his head. "Could you imagine?"

"No, I couldn't," Kurt answered, forcing himself to laugh. But listening to Blaine laugh with him just made him want to say something to unnerve his friend and piss him off. "But, I mean, speaking strictly with him as a _technical specimen_ – he was superb. I mean, he was _good,_" he said, drawing out the last syllable and even biting his lip for good measure.

"Yeah, but, it was just a game, right?" Blaine asked, seeming a little angry about the whole thing all of a sudden. One might say even jealous – but that was silly.

Kurt shrugged. "Well, I'm not sayin' anything," he told Blaine, "But I wouldn't object to round two…"

"Okay!" Blaine said loudly, clapping his gloved hands together. "We're done talking about this."

"Why, Blaine, does it upset you?" Kurt teased. "Jealous you couldn't get in on the action?"

"I'm not answering you until you change the topic," Blaine said stubbornly. But his face was red, so Kurt thought he was getting pretty close to the truth.

"Because, I mean, when your turn came around it could've been you and I - " He knew he was treading into dangerous territory, but he got too much satisfaction out of riling Blaine up. " – and my lips would've been all warmed up for you and everything."

"I _said_ I'm done talking about it!" Blaine practically yelled, his ears showing bright red. Kurt knew that only happened when he was really upset, and he knew he'd gone too far.

They were nearing their street now, so Kurt figured he'd better apologize before they got home. "I'm sorry, Blaine, I was just kidding. Nothing has to change between any of us, really."

Blaine walked for a few seconds in silence, staring at the wet ground. "But it does – don't you see?"

Kurt just shook his head. He honestly did _not_ see.

"Kurt, I saw your face when it happened," Blaine told him softly, almost sadly. "I was right there. I saw the whole thing."

"I was just - " Kurt started. "I'm not going to start going out with Sebastian Smythe," he finally declared. "I already told you I'm not interested anyways so why are you pushing it?"

"I saw your face," was all Blaine would say. "And you can't fake something like that just for a game."

"Okay, but the game is over, Blaine, if you hadn't noticed. I won't say anything about it if he won't."

Blaine raised his eyebrows. "I'm sorry, have you _met_ the two of you? Because _I_ have, and there's no way either of you are _not_ going to bring that up again when you two are fighting or something stupid like that – neither of you could resist. I don't want to deal with that – God, why did you guys have to make it all weird?" he burst out.

"Look, I honestly just want to drop this, Blaine," Kurt replied coolly. "I'm done with it; I don't want to think about it anymore." Another half-lie. "You're still my best friend, and so's he. So you're just going to have to get over it, because I am."

"Yeah well," Blaine said as they neared his house first, "Maybe I won't."

And then he ran up the steps to his house and slammed the door shut, leaving Kurt standing out in the rain.

* * *

So that's how what once was an (unlikely, yes, but also) inseparable trio came undone. Well, not completely undone, just partially undone. Like you know when you use the cheap kind of glue to stick some paper to cardboard and eventually it gets unsticky and starts peeling off and you keep trying to put it back together – sticking the paper back in its place, hoping the glue will take, but it never does? Like that.

The next time Kurt talked to Sebastian (while sitting on the steps of Seb's house, if you must know) it went a little something like this:

**Sebastian:** So…

**Kurt:** So.

**Sebastian:** The other night -

**Kurt**: - Yeah, that party was kind of a bust.

**Sebastian:** Was it? I didn't notice.

**Kurt:** …

**Sebastian:** Well, I mean, we could_ play_ again if you wanted.

**Kurt:** Shut _up,_ Seb. I just want to forget it already. In case you hadn't noticed, it pissed Blaine off.

**Sebastian:** Really? Why? And I hadn't noticed, just for the record.

**Kurt:** Well, you're very unobservant then. Why am I surprised – you're such an idiot.

**Sebastian:** Are you…mad? Hey, you are. Your face is getting all red, whoa!

**Kurt:** I'm not mad. I just want things to go back to normal already. It's been two days.

**Sebastian:** Yeah, well I wouldn't hold my breath for normalcy any time soon, babe.

**Kurt:** OH MY GOD, DON'T CALL ME THAT!

**Sebastian:** Okay, okay. Geez, lighten up.

**Kurt:** Shut up.

**Sebastian:** _You_ shut up.

**Kurt:** No, I told you to shut up _first_…

And, well, you can see how that conversation went.

After that, things between him and Sebastian were relatively unchanged. In other words, they were still in fairly good humor and still at one another's throats every now and then. But Kurt did find himself staring at Seb's mouth considerably more. It wasn't really his fault, because his mouth just looked so soft and now he could confirm that it was _actually_ soft, so he just had to actively stop himself from thinking.

Which, as you can imagine, isn't really possible.

The whole Blaine front didn't get resolved until the summer. THE SUMMER.

Seriously, he didn't know why Blaine was so goddamn upset about the whole situation, but he actively took steps to avoid Kurt and Sebastian! The following Monday after the Party Debacle, Kurt noticed that Blaine was no where to be found during lunch.

He asked Seb about it, but all that dumb boy did was shrug and keep eating his food.

It wasn't until Friday that Kurt finally cornered Blaine (Kurt memorized the paths he took to get to all his classes and between which ones he took a bathroom break – seriously, those were planned) in the hallway and asked him what the hell his problem was and why was he ditching lunch?

"I'm not ditching lunch," Blaine told him. "My math class got switched to second period and now I have Biology for fourth in the Science building so I have second lunch now."

"Your math class got switched?" Kurt pressed. "Just like that? No warning? Your teacher just stood up at the beginning of class and said, 'Sorry, guys, we're moving to second period.'"

Blaine shrugged. "Something like that."

Kurt just stared at him incredulously and waited for the real explanation, but none came. "Fine, I'll see you later then," was all he said.

"Later."

Needless to say, they did not see each other later.

Lunch had been really the only time they got to see each other, so it just made the weekdays seem that much longer. Lunch was still enjoyable though because a) food and b) Sebastian, who remained unchanged as ever, so there were no problems there.

But when approached with the subject, all Sebastian had to say was this,

"Hey, Seb. Did you know that Blaine switched classes so that he wouldn't have to sit with us at lunch anymore?"

"No, I didn't. Hey, are you going to eat that mac 'n cheese?"

"No, you can have it. Hey, don't get your sleeve in my pizza!"

"Don't worry, I'm not going to contaminate your food with my _sleeve._"

"Shut up. But come on, Seb. That doesn't bother you?" Two minutes of silence. "Seb? SEBASTIAN, I ASKED YOU A QUESTION."

"What, you told me to shut up."

"And you chose this moment to _listen_ to me?"

"To answer your question, no, it doesn't bother me if I get a little pizza grease on my sleeve. My mom taught me this trick where if you just soak your clothes in - "

"_Seb._"

"Look, I don't control what Blaine does. If he wants to switch lunches, he can switch lunches. It's his life. It doesn't bother me. He's a big boy. He even goes to the restroom by himself, bless his heart."

"But this is about the whole…" God, he couldn't even bring himself to _say_ it. "…Party thing, isn't it?"

"Don't know," Sebastian answered intelligently. "Don't care."

"God, you suck," Kurt groaned.

Sebastian winked. "You know I do."

"You have _cheese_ on your face, idiot."

The three of them still hung out on weekends, though. At first it was tense. Like uncomfortably silent and no one would think of anything to say because everything just came out wrong and started an argument. But it was something.

Kurt started to notice that Blaine would at least talk in full sentences if it was just the two of them, so he started staggering his relationships. There were days when he'd hang out with just Seb and other days he'd hang out with only Blaine. Sure, it kind of sucked, but it lightened up Blaine so that when they all did finally hang out together, it wasn't so awful.

But then high school happened and everything went haywire again.

* * *

It was so weird because they lived so close to one another, but they lived such separate lives starting that fall. Like Kurt could literally see into Blaine's room from his (more on that later) and sometimes he could see the light from Seb's window reflected onto the dark pavement at night.

But Kurt had taken up the Drama Club (yeah, they had cool things like Drama Club in high school – take that middle school!), Blaine had joined the school choir, and Seb had tried out for (and made the first string of, then consequently was made captain of) the JV soccer team. So seeing each other outside of school became pretty much a miracle. Blaine and Seb had lunch together the first semester - which was weird at first, he was informed by both sides - but it was mostly spent on catching up day-to-day and gradually kind of mended the rift between them.

Second semester, Kurt and Seb had lunch together, but sometimes Kurt sat at a table with friends from his Drama class and Sebastian would hang out with the soccer team. It was fun and all, but that meant even less time spent together, especially with Blaine's absence, and though he still called Blaine his best friend, sometimes he'd still refer to him as "That Anderson Kid" if he were feeling particularly resentful. Why did life have to come in and screw them up?

Whatever. And as usual Sebastian was moving on with his life and dating people left and right. Girls, boys, it didn't matter, he'd probably dated them. Thinking of anyone in particular? He probably went out with them too, don't worry. And every week he would take special care to rub it in Kurt's face.

"Got a hot date this weekend, Hummel?"

Imagine his surprise just yesterday when Kurt finally replied, "Actually, yes."

It's true. Kurt Hummel had a date. His first, actual date.

Okay, so it wasn't really a date. Only it was. Just listen.

So there was a senior (repeat for those who do not understand the gravity of the situation: A SENIOR) in his Drama class named Ryan – no connection to Ryan Gosling, but still very, very handsome with this dark sticky-uppy hair and really nice arms. Kurt was a dedicated endorser of the arts, and he tried to immerse himself as much as possible in the subculture that was thespianism.

Fine. He heard Ryan (and every other cute, possibly gay boy) was trying out for the spring production and he volunteered his talents. So he was painting sets.

More conveniently he was painting sets as Ryan and company rehearsed (Ryan was awarded the lead, of course). This meant he got a lot of paint on himself…and on the floor. Which meant he got yelled at a lot. What could he say? Watching an actor at work was distracting.

For the love of all that's good, the boy had a great ass, okay? And a voice that carried.

Some of the kids got together after Friday night rehearsals to go grab a bite to eat at the local pizza place or to just hang around restaurants all night long in general as they recited Shakespearean monologues and talked about school stuff. You know, normal teenage ongoings.

Kurt usually didn't go because sometimes Blaine was free and they'd have a movie marathon or just lie on one another's bed for hours. That was another thing about high school: it made you feel really exhausted.

So Kurt was just going to pass as usual, only on Wednesday Ryan actually approached him. Which made Kurt spill more paint that usual, like an idiot.

The titillating conversation went as follows:

"So, Kurt. Are you going out with the gang this Friday?"

Really, he said "_the gang_" like that. He was too cool to even be real.

"I was thinking about it," Kurt lied. He was thinking about it NOW.

"Cool," Ryan commented. "I was probably gonna go, too."

Kurt nodded. "Uh huh." Wow, his vernacular was really shining through.

"Maybe we could go together?" Oh, cute! He was all shy about it!

"Sure," Kurt answered demurely. He felt a little dazed.

"And, uh, we could ditch the club after dinner for a little…dessert?"

Be still, Kurt's heart! His prayers were being answered at last! Dessert!

"I'd like that."

So it was settled.

Well, they exchanged a few more words about Kurt's artistic abilities (yeah right) and Kurt just said how the sets would pale in comparison to Ryan's talent. Then they kind of hugged because the ten minute break was up at that point and they went back to their own work.

He basically had to throw those clothes away because they were so covered in paint and wood shreds from set building. He almost lost a thumb – it just was not easy to concentrate after that.

Then as soon as practice let out, he had to share the news.

So he called Seb.

"GUESS WHAT?"

"Your mother never taught you how to whisper?"

"Ha ha _ha_. But seriously!"

"I don't know…You reached into your pocket and found a five dollar bill? Because I did that once and I just had to call my Aunt Judith to relate to her the joyous news!"

"Are you done?"

"I don't know. I might be on a roll…"

"You're killing my vibe."

"You had a _vibe?_"

"Please stop speaking now."

"You called _me_, Hummel. Don't be rude."

"I got a date!" he blurted out finally.

"…What?"

"A _date_, Seb. I got a friggen date. With a guy. Who's cute. This Friday."

"Is this guy Blaine?"

"WHAT? BAS! NO!"

"Wow, remind me to turn down to volume on my phone. _Ouch_."

"Sorry, but just…no."

"What, is it such a wild idea?"

"Do you _want_ me to hang up?"

"You called _me_," Sebastian repeated.

"Okay, well I got a date. That's it."

"Kurt, fucking tell me the whole story in complete sentences or I swear to God…"

"Oh, _now_ you're interested."

"You woke me up, so I want it to be for good reason."

"I woke you _up?_ Bas, it's like seven thirty in the evening. You can't be sleeping."

There was a rustling on the other line. "I was napping."

"At seven thirty?"

"Yeah, got a problem with it?"

"You're going to be up all night."

"Are we here to discuss my sleeping habits or your love life?"

Kurt felt himself blushing. "Well, I wouldn't call it a love life…"

But he rehashed all the details to Seb (with multiple interruptions), but at least he was telling _someone_ so it's not like he made the whole thing up. Right? That was how these things worked?

"Wait. He said it just like that?"

"Said what?"

"'_Dessert_'," Sebastian mocked.

"Yeah, why?"

"Well…What does he mean by '_dessert_'?"

Kurt laughed. "_Dessert_, Bas. You know, like ice cream, cake, pie, fruit, pudding, et cetera, which is served as the final course of a meal? Traditionally eaten after dinner?"

A noise that sounded an awful lot like Sebastian choking met this remark. "Kurt," he managed to say. "_Kurt._ What if by 'dessert', he means, y'know…DESSERT?"

"I don't get it," Kurt replied, honestly _not_ getting it.

"I mean," Sebastian lowered his voice to a silky purr, "_dessert._"

"What do you m - " Kurt gasped and nearly dropped his phone. "_No._"

"_Yes._"

"NO."

"YES."

"God, Sebastian what the hell is wrong with you? Who_ thinks_ like that?"

"Me and every other guy on the planet who wants to get in your pants."

Kurt spluttered because of the double meaning of Seb's words, but he couldn't actually say anything besides, "That. Is. Just. Not possible."

"All guys think that way."

"I don't!"

"Because you're so innocent and sweet," Sebastian cooed.

Kurt let out a half-scream, half-growl of frustration. "I am _not_ innocent and sweet. I know the dating lingo!"

"You know _the dating lingo?_" Sebastian echoed incredulously.

"I…have experience," Kurt insisted.

Sebastian sounded doubtful. "You do?"

"I've been…kissed."

"By _me._"

"AAAAAAAAAARGH!" Kurt yelled.

"Okay, _okay,_" Sebastian said quickly. "Geez, a guy can't even point out facts anymore."

"For F's sake - "

"Just fucking cuss already."

Kurt groaned. "For _fuck's_ sake, Bas. I was actually excited about this and you've totally ruined it for me. Now whenever my Dad asks me if I want any dessert I'm going to think these perverted thoughts because you're a goddamn _pig_."

"You're thinking perverted thoughts right now?"

"STOP TURNING MY WORDS AROUND!"

"Kurt, seriously. We need to work out a warning for when you're going to start yelling into the phone. Do like an exotic bird call or something, _damn_."

Kurt ignored him. "Look, do you really think he's going to try something on me. I mean, he's a _Senior_ and I'm just a Freshman doing sets. He could get his…_fill_ somewhere else."

"His _fill_, oh my God," Seb laughed. He didn't stop for a while.

"I'm glad you're having fun, asshole."

"Look, he obviously wants something from you if he stepped off his goddamn pedestal and entered the dejected island of Drama wannabes painting street lamps and sponging bricks – or whatever it is you do. No, don't correct me, I don't care."

"Nice," Kurt commented.

"I'm just saying. It's not out of the realm of possibility for him to want to take you parking or something."

"Parking?" Kurt reiterated. "PARKING? Oh my God, Seb. Parking implies so much more than just…I can't do that. What kind of mentally disturbed guy refers to…to that as DESSERT?"

"Look," Sebastian told him, "I'm not saying that that's the case, but I just want you to be mentally prepared for if he drives you off onto a dark, secluded road."

"Please, Smythe," Kurt cut him off. "Please just stop talking because now you're making it sound like I'm going on a date with a serial killer and I just wanted someone to be happy for me."

"If you wanted someone to be happy for you why didn't you call Anderson? He would've been over the moon, I'm sure."

Kurt stopped short. He didn't know why he hadn't called Blaine first, now that he thought about it. "Umm…I don't think Blaine likes hearing much about my…romantic interests," was all he could think of to say.

"Really?" Sebastian asked. "Well if you want someone to spout rainbows, butterflies, fluffy clouds, and all that bullshit over all this, I suggest trying him."

"No, you're right," Kurt admitted. "I should be ready if he has a…sweet tooth." He chose to ignore Seb's sniggering. "I shouldn't be surprised. I mean, he's older and more mature and why would he not want…_pie a la mode_?"

"Well thanks for the visual," Sebastian replied, "But if you're done making terrible food and sex puns, I'm going back to bed. Unless you want to come over for some…_help_."

Kurt sighed in exasperation. So this is what loathing felt like. "GOODBYE, Sebastian."

* * *

So that brings us full circle, back to Thursday evening as Kurt paced his room, reflecting on all this and wondering why both of his best friends were complete idiots who were of absolutely no help to him whatsoever.

Blaine was predictable. After hanging up with Sebastian, Kurt had called him right away, hoping his oldest friend would reassure him that there was nothing to worry about – dessert was dessert and Kurt would have a swell time.

He did say a few things along those lines. That he was really happy for Kurt and that Ryan was a great guy – they had the same P.E. period, go figure – and he'd have a great time, he just knew it.

"But what about all the…" Kurt tried.

"All the what?"

"_Kissing,_" Kurt whispered as if this were a scandalous topic.

Blaine snorted, which sounded about ten times more ungraceful over the phone. "Kurt, I hate to break it to you, but you've been kissed before – in case you forgot already."

Kurt felt himself turning red again. He was doing that often whenever lips came up, it seemed. "I didn't _forget,_" he hissed, "I just don't count that time."

That piqued Blaine's interest. "You don't?"

"No, Blaine," Kurt explained slowly. "I do not. You wanna know why? Because it was a dumb game of Spin-the-Bottle and I wasn't even the one doing all the work."

"Whoa, too much information!" Blaine practically yelled.

Kurt let out a long breath, willing himself not to tell Blaine where to go. "I just meant that I wasn't actively thinking about nor initiating the actual…action. Sebastian was the one in control."

"Okay, I'm really not comfortable talking about this."

"Neither am I, but you have to get over it at _some_ point, Blaine."

"Whatever."

"Look, I don't even know why I'm asking you about any of this. I just thought you could help me, but I guess not. Because it's not like you have any experience or anything."

Blaine stayed silent.

"Wait, that's not what I meant, Blaine - "

"I've kissed people before," he was informed.

Kurt nearly dropped the phone and knocked himself out on his headboard. "You…_have?_" he managed to choke out.

"Many times," Blaine reported stiffly.

"Are you serious?" Kurt asked, starting to feel a little pissed off. Did everyone in the goddamn world have more of a clue about intimacy than him? What the hell! "You've kissed _people?_ Like just gone up to people and grabbed their face and planted one on them?"

"Well not in that total cheesy romance novel with the guy on the cover who has his shirt open and long hair blowing in the breeze kind of way, but essentially, yes."

"I can't believe this!" Kurt burst out. "I can't fucking believe this!"

"Whoa, whoa," Blaine told him, "Calm down. What's the big deal?"

"The big deal?" Kurt repeated. "The big _deal_ is that I have no idea what I'm doing and Sebastian told me that by dessert, Ryan probably means fervent intercourse – so _good fucking luck_ to me while the two of you get busy with every pair of lips in town!"

Then he hung up.

Then he pounded his head on his nightstand wondering why he was so hell-bent on attacking everyone he cared about within an hour's time of one another.

Only all that banging his head on wood was giving him an extreme headache and making him feel even worse.

So he let it go until the next day, in which time he completely ignored all of Sebastian's conjectures on the subject. He was personally antagonizing Kurt, too. He bought an ice cream cone from the snack bar at lunch and went on to perform phallic mimicries – well, as graphic as one can get with soft-serve - with it until the bell (blessedly) rang for fifth period.

Blaine tried catching up with him during passing period, but Kurt practically put out an eye weaving in and out of the oncoming foot traffic to avoid him. He considered running into the girl's bathroom just to lose him, but thankfully it didn't get to that point before Blaine gave up and made his way to his own classroom.

So it was about seven in the evening Thursday night and Kurt needed help NOW. Because tomorrow he'd go to school, then straight after school was rehearsal, then they'd go directly to dinner (Oh God, he'd probably be getting a ride from Ryan now that he thought about it), then DESSERT! He needed instruction and he needed it _now_ if he was going to survive this.

Which was pretty sad because he wanted to enjoy himself, but now he was worrying about keeping his virginity intact, thanks to Sebastian's crass comments. Even Rachel shared the opinion that "dessert" might not be frozen yogurt down at the mall. Seriously, where did people get this lingo from? Why couldn't dessert be dessert and sex be sex? But no, everything had to be all confusing and spoken in code.

So now he was worrying about how to keep Ryan at bay, because while Ryan was handsome, he wasn't, like willing-to-give-up-all-my-preconceived-notions-about-sex-and-make-you-my-first kind of handsome.

And maybe it was the fact that if he stood on his tippy-toes he could see into Blaine's bedroom, like he maybe sort of did every now and then (for scientific purposes, rest assured) and at this exact, particular moment in time, Blaine was kind of doing his sit-up regimen.

When he realized, hey, at some point in his life, Blaine had turned from the creepy alien little kid across the street into someone who was sort of…um, to be blunt, quite sexy. Well, okay, when Blaine was fully clothed, Kurt didn't think these kinds of thoughts, but you really don't understand. When Blaine did his abdominal regime, he did it sans clothing up top. So his chest was all wide and stuff and he was lying on the floor and lifting up his _legs_ – you know what, it was just a really provocative position to watch someone put themselves in.

So Kurt had just taken a quick peek over – to calm his nerves, naturally – when he realized, wait a minute: Blaine's a guy. And a particularly attractive guy who he trusted with his life even if he was acting like kind of an asshole sometimes. An attractive, trustworthy, guy with a _mouth_. And, fine, maybe that was a weird realization to have, but that didn't stop Kurt from grabbing his house keys and bolting out the door and across the street (without looking both ways before crossing).

And thankfully that lanyard of keys had a copy of the one's to Blaine's house (consequence of a long, family friendship) and he unlocked the front door and ran straight upstairs without bothering to see if anyone else was home.

He practically kicked down Blaine's door as he threw it open, closing it quickly behind him. It was only until he turned to face his oldest friend – who was lying on his bed reading a book now (still without a shirt, he was happy to report) – that realized how silly he must've looked.

"Hi?" Blaine prompted, seeming generally indifferent.

That was the good thing about frequenting someone's house – they stop thinking about each individual visit.

"Hi," Kurt answered, not even knowing what he expected himself to ask at this point.

Blaine stuck his thumb inbetween the pages of his book, holding his place. "What's up?"

"Umm, well…"

"Have you been pacing?"

Kurt just stared at him. "How could you possibly know that?"

Blaine shrugged. "I saw your shadow in your window going back and forth."

"You watch my window?" Kurt asked, voice laced with suspicion – as if he hadn't been doing the exact same thing not five minutes ago.

"No, I just looked over and I saw," Blaine explained. "Which means, if you were pacing – which I have now confirmed that you were – that you have something on your mind and that something is probably…dessert."

Kurt felt himself turning red. "Will you guys stop calling it that? _Geez_."

"Okay, well I assume you seek my advice," Blaine responded confidently. "Which I'll happily supply you with."

"You assume too much," Kurt retorted. "Get a job. Or a hobby."

"Fine, I guess you're okay then," was all Blaine said before going back to his book.

"_Blaine,_" Kurt half-whined. No response. "Blaine, you can't even pretend to be interested in that book, it's required reading. Next time pick up one of your own books and I might believe you."

"Hey, it's…decent," Blaine told him, holding his place again. "What do you want, Kurt? As you can see, I'm interested in furthering my literary horizons."

"Yeah, whatever," Kurt snapped. He sat awkwardly at the foot of Blaine's bed. After a moment he began, "Alright, so…I might be a little…out of my depth where tomorrow is concerned."

"What do you mean?" Blaine had gone back to reading his book, so he sounded a bit disinterested.

"I mean, I've never actually…done it," Kurt confessed. Which was true – he'd never seriously kissed anyone in his life unless you counted Sebastian, which he most certainly didn't and he tried to repress the memory whenever it came up, lest it confuse him even more where his friendships were concerned. "And I was wondering if you could…show me?"

"Show you how to have _sex?_" Blaine blurted. "Oh my God, Kurt, I had no idea you'd…Of course, that _could_ be arranged if you wanted…"

"_Sex?_" Kurt nearly shrieked. "Why would I need you to show me how to have _sex?_ DON'T ANSWER THAT – we are _not_ having this conversation! God, Blaine, you _perv_."

"You're the one who said you'd never quote unquote, 'done it'," Blaine argued. "What am I supposed to think when you put it like that?"

"_Kissing,_" Kurt clarified. "I mean to say that I had never seriously kissed anyone."

"But Sebastian - "

"It was Spin-the-Bottle!" Kurt shouted (for what seemed the billionth time). "He did all the work - " [Insert an "ew" from Blaine here] " – and I really just sat there and _took_ it…"

"Kurt," Blaine objected. "Seriously, stop."

"Okay, but the point is that I'm clueless and, okay, _yes_, I've _been_ kissed but I've never _kissed_ anyone. And if Ryan is what after what everyone _says_ he's after, I have to at least be a killer kisser so I can let him down gently and tell him I'm interested but not _that_ interested. Is that so much to ask?" He fell back onto Blaine's mattress with a thud.

"I guess I see your point," Blaine said, sitting up and putting his book on the nightstand. "But what am I gonna do about it? I can't just transfer what I know about kissing into your brain or else I would – granted that you'd actually return my knowledge," he teased.

"This is no time for jokes, Blaine," Kurt groaned. "I need help. I'm not above groveling."

"Well…I don't get what I'm supposed to…do," Blaine said, looking at him expectantly.

Kurt shrugged. "Tell me about it."

"What?"

"Yeah, tell me about it. Tell me everything you know about it."

"Just start spouting out facts?"

"Yeah, why not? Most of our schooling is told through verbal lectures. Why shouldn't kissing be the same? Just _tell_ me."

"Umm, I don't know if I'm comfortable with th - "

"_Blaine._"

"What? I mean this isn't something we really talk about - "

"I know."

"Up until yesterday you didn't even know I was alive."

"_What?_"

"I mean you never _bothered_ to ask about my personal life before. It's like you chose to not think of me as a person who exists in society and in the world. You refuse to acknowledge that I'm a human being and I crave physical contact too…"

"You really need to stop reading your psychology textbook for fun."

"I'm not joking, Kurt!" Blaine said angrily, getting up from the bed and everything. "You and Sebastian choose to just think of me as the boy next door. But I'm not anymore. I'm just as old as either of you and I - " He stopped himself. "You know what, it doesn't matter. I _exist,_ Kurt. There – I said it."

"I've always known you existed," Kurt protested softly. "You're my best friend."

"I know that," Blaine said, as if reassuring himself of this face. "I do. I just…I don't know. So I've kissed a few people. Seb's probably more qualified to teach a seminar on the subject, don't you think?"

Kurt groaned. "As a teacher, he's kind of…controlling…"

"Okay, never mind," Blaine interjected. He grabbed his shirt off his footboard (much to Kurt's disappointment) and shrugged it on. "I'm going to try to teach you what I know," he decided – again, seemingly for his own benefit – and he sat down next to Kurt on the bed again.

"So first you - " He tilted his own head upwards. "And you kind of - " The tip of his tongue was barely visible as he licked his lips quickly before parting them. "Then it's like - "

He looked like he was having a love affair with the air.

Kurt giggled – he couldn't help it! Blaine looked silly!

Blaine stopped and dropped his hands – which had risen to grope the air – and glared at Kurt. His cheeks were blazing red and Kurt stopped laughing immediately.

"I'm sorry," he apologized, "It's just that you look…a little weird just doing that by yourself."

"Do you have a better idea?"

"No…"

"Okay, here. Practice on this." Blaine grabbed Kurt's hand and shoved it towards his mouth.

"Ow! What the hell? You want me to kiss my hand? This is like those really bad 80's movies where the little girls try to give themselves hickies on their arms."

"Don't give yourself a hickey," was all Blaine said. "It'll be awfully difficult to explain to your Dad in the morning."

Kurt looked at the back of his hand, trying to imagine it was a really, really insanely hot guy. Ryan Gosling? No. Orlando Bloom? No. Sebastian Smythe? NO, Kurt told his brain, STOP THAT. And he couldn't pretend it was Blaine, because, _hello_, Blaine was sitting _right there_, watching him intently. So that'd be awkward.

When Kurt made no move to start seducing his own appendage, Blaine held up his own hand as a precursor.

"Fine, you won't do it? Then _I_ will."

Then Blaine started_ kissing_ his own hand! And you would've thought that his palm was the love of his life or something because he was _really _kissing it.

Kurt thought his eyes were going to bug right out of his head, because whatever "experience" Blaine had procured over the years was definitely above par and, wow, where could he learn to do THAT? Seriously, his eyes were glued to Blaine's lips which were mouthing over the curve of his hand and he did this thing with his _tongue_.

You read that right, he used _tongue_ on his own freaking _hand_.

And it looked…amazing. Blaine kind of looked up at Kurt over his fingertips and gave him this _look _– he couldn't describe it if he tried. Then he turned his hand over and started working on his wrist, right at the base of his palm, looking at Kurt all the while.

Kurt licked his lips nervously and looked at his own hand. There was no way he could do _that_ to _this,_ he thought. But Blaine grabbed his wrist and shoved his hand closer to his mouth like "_Come on, man, this isn't a free show_."

So Kurt pressed a light kiss to his own open palm, feeling more than a little ridiculous.

"Come on, Kurt," Blaine protested. "That's pathetic."

Kurt looked at the little wet mark he'd left behind on his hand and he cringed. "That's because this is stupid, Blaine. How can I practice kissing on my hand? It's not even remotely the same."

"Hey, I'm the teacher here," Blaine reproached. "Just do as I do." He kissed his wrist again, really slowly and softly. "Come on," he encouraged Kurt.

Kurt tilted his head, squeezed his eyes shut, and did as he was bid, really trying to imagine that he was in one of those movies and this was it - the big moment. He let his mouth just hover above his skin, feeling the tiny hairs brushing against his lips and he really tried to shut his brain off.

If he moved his hand just slightly, it did make his lips tingle a little. So maybe it wouldn't be so difficult to…

"No, no, no," Blaine cut in, wrenching Kurt's hand away from him. "You look like your kissing your aunt's cheek. You know, the ones who used to coddle you and leave their make up on your face."

"I just…This is…" Kurt spluttered. "THIS IS A HAND!" he shouted, holding up the offending limb dumbly. "It's not gonna grow lips, Blaine!"

"You're not actually trying, Kurt," Blaine answered, equally as frustrated. "I _know_ when you're trying and you're not right now. Trying was when you wouldn't go home until you shot thirty free throws in a row or when Seb bet that you couldn't eat ten hotdogs and when you were going to throw up the ninth one, you stayed strong and ate the tenth one."

"Please don't remind me about that right now."

"Point is you're not trying and I'm not going to give up on this until you get it right." And he looked like he meant it too.

Kurt sighed and glared at his own hand. "Fine," he huffed.

"Watch me," Blaine instructed, moving his lips against his hand.

Damn, only he could make kissing something that couldn't kiss back look good. And tempting, too.

Kurt _really_ tried to mimic him this time. He tilted his head opposite the way Blaine's was and he parted his lips. He let his tongue touch the pressure point where his veins showed through his pale skin, and it almost felt…good?

It wasn't anywhere near the actual sensation of being kissed, but it was definitely something. He imitated Blaine and dragged his tongue up his wrist to his palm, as lightly as he could and he shuddered a bit, eyes flickering to Blaine.

Blaine was opening his mouth wider, and eyeing Kurt in a way that said "_do this_", and Kurt tried, but it was just…too weird. Because Blaine was _right there_ and he was looking right at him and whatever Blaine did, Kurt did, but in the other direction. So it was like, if you took away their hands and closed a few inches, they'd be _kissing._

And this was a very distracting thought to have when he could _see_ Blaine's tongue and _hear _the light sucking noises his mouth was making around his skin. He could see the slightly red marks left behind on his wrist and hand and Blaine did this thing where he'd close his eyes and let out a long breath that seemed to skate around his hand, like he was teaching Kurt how to breathe and what noises to make. Then he'd open his eyes really slowly and look at Kurt in this way that revealed that maybe this was doing a thing or two for him too.

"You look ridiculous," Blaine told him after a moment. "You look so uncomfortable."

"Uncomfortable?" Kurt repeated, feeling flustered. He'd been very in the moment. "Blaine, I'm kissing my hand in my best friend's room. Maybe this isn't the best way of instruction."

Blaine just looked at him, like he was trying to decide something. His teeth were working on his bottom lip, the way they did when he was fighting against himself. Kurt had seen this look many times, but never in relation to himself.

Then he shrugged. Like there was nothing else he could do and the rest was in God's hands or whatever.

"No, no," Kurt pleaded, taking Blaine's hand. "Don't give up. I know I suck as a student, but I'll try harder. Really, I will. I need your help, Blaine, please – more than I've ever needed help in my life."

Blaine shook his head. "I know you're trying, Kurt. I can see that you are. But it's just not working."

"I'll do anything," Kurt begged, despair already leaking into his voice. "Anything, Blaine. Just help me."

"Anything?" Blaine confirmed, quirking an eyebrow.

He nodded quickly. "Anything."

Blaine sat back, literally _on_ one of his hands like he was trying to restrain himself from grabbing something, and looked away from Kurt. He stayed quiet for a moment and surveyed the carpet, making Kurt more and more anxious by the second.

"Blaine?"

His head snapped back up and his eyes dropped to Kurt's mouth, which was still a little wet from his hand-to-mouth resuscitation.

"Fuck it," he muttered, and he grabbed Kurt's hand and tugged…

…hard enough to send Kurt practically sprawling into his lap – not that that was a concern because Blaine's mouth was just about an inch away, and Blaine was waiting for him to do something.

Because Kurt had been _kissed_, but he'd never _kissed _anyone. So he _had_ been listening, Kurt thought, smiling a little to himself.

And, well, that was about the last lucid thought he had because he found himself touching Blaine's neck. He could just feel the very edge of Blaine's hair, where it needed to be trimmed, and he felt Blaine pressing closer into his touch, like he was saying, "_Go on_."

And Kurt had never before in his life shared a similar moment with anyone – he never before had a first kiss with a boy he loved.

Blaine was letting him play everything by feeling; his lips were soft and gave way to whatever Kurt commanded them to do. Kurt could feel Blaine's hand resting on his hip, sometimes twitching if he did something (he presumed to be) good.

Kurt's shoulders weren't tense anymore, but they were practically coming up to his ears as he explored Blaine's mouth, just from feeling so _much_ in such a short span of time. At first he pressed slow closed-mouthed kisses to Blaine's lips, like a soft, little inquiry. He was testing the waters, so to speak, and seeing how pliable Blaine _really_ was.

He could feel Blaine's breath tickling his bottom lip as he turned his attention to the top, drawing it into his mouth in a way he'd always thought would feel good. Blaine's hand moved from his belt loop to the top of his thigh, squeezing as Kurt ran his tongue along the inner curve of his lip.

Blaine's bottom lip had fallen further open and was pressed against the top of Kurt's chin, mouthing a small wet mark there as he pressed in closer. As they pulled apart, only slightly, Kurt chanced a quick glance down at Blaine's mouth which was hanging open, just waiting for him to make his next move – waiting for _him_.

He obliged swiftly, maybe a little too fast as he practically swooped in and just took Blaine's mouth with this power he never knew he had. Because it seemed like Blaine was kind of enjoying it and that made him feel more confident. He grabbed a fistful of the hem of Blaine's shirt and tugged him closer so that he had to put a hand on either side of Kurt's hips, but their chests were touching now and, wow, that kind of took things to the next level.

And he could_ feel_ every breath Blaine took, all the way from the contraction of his chest, to the subsequent heartbeat, to the way it just came rushing out of his mouth and over his lips. He could feel the way Blaine was clutching the bedspread, restraining himself as he willed Kurt to hold the lead.

Kurt hooked an arm around Blaine's neck and drew him near. So near that his hand was resting on his own shoulder and Blaine let out this little sound between a moan and a chuckle of surprise, and, _ohh-kay_ , his lips were at an even better angle this way. They were also just a little bit more enthusiastic than before.

He felt Blaine's fingertips on his back, riding up his shirt just enough for him to feel the friction actually passing from digit to spine. Kurt froze his mouth, panting and just feeling the automatic response of his own body, recoiling into Blaine's contact. But Blaine went right on kissing him, pressing his tongue under Kurt's and moving it slowly upward, up over the tip, against the roof of his mouth, and along his upper lip. Slowly, deliberately, then he repeated the circuit until Kurt collided their mouths together.

It was really sudden and really unexpected – out of no where – but Kurt pushed Blaine down onto the mattress (really, with so much force that Blaine's head kind of bounced) without relieving Blaine of his lips for a second and was kneeling over him.

This, he thought in the moment's pause between kisses, was the real position of power, if ever there was one.

But it felt too easy. Surely this should involve a little more tact, right? But then he kind of felt his brain detaching from its stem and his whole body going numb because Blaine was holding his shoulders really tightly and his leg was kind of draped over Kurt's – and, uh, who was in charge here again?

This was _new_ – _this_ was what everyone was getting at.

It was weird because he'd never been more aware of his body – never, ever before had there been any actual use for it; it had never served a particular purpose except to carry him around places, play sports, build sets, or whatever. Sometimes he resented it when looking in the mirror, sometimes he thought things could be changed about it, sometimes he just felt like a blob of existence. But not now.

_This_, surely, was what bodies were designed for: _each other_. How else could they fit so perfectly together? They were built from the ground up for this very reason; touching, pressing, discovering. And for the first time he didn't resent his body because it was everything. It was everything and nothing at the same time.

Everything because each touch was so, so much. Nothing because he was sure his blood was trying to rush to every pressure point at the same time, so some things got forgotten. Like his knees, his little fingers, or his stomach, or his shins. But every time Blaine shifted underneath him, these neglected parts of him were being worshipped indirectly because everything was connected. Each sensation was like an egg cracking over his head, trickling down his spine, extending to every inch of his skin and going right down to his toes. It was everything.

Blaine tilted his head back against the bed and Kurt found himself kissing the corner of his mouth. He could feel the corner of said mouth curving upward into a smile. Was this another test? Oh, who was he kidding, he didn't care. Because if it were possible (let it be noted that up until this point, it had not been) Blaine's skin tasted even better than his lips.

His neck was there just like an open invitation and suddenly it was beyond his willpower to go back to Blaine's mouth. He felt the other boy's hands running up his sides, under his shirt and so he sat back a little and mouthed his way down Blaine's chin. Then the whole hand-kissing mishap didn't seem like such a silly exercise because necks don't kiss back.

But it seemed to be an instinctual thing. This wasn't like kissing his own hand because this engaged a response. And he found out quickly just how much Blaine enjoyed for his neck to be kissed. Kurt dug his knees into the mattress and kissed his throat with open, warm kisses, his opposite hand supporting Blaine's head, holding him in place.

Blaine's breath hitched and it had to be the most beautiful noise ever to meet Kurt's ears, because it was induced by _him_. He was just getting into it, too, when Blaine pulled him back up to mouth level and gave him a kiss that left him totally breathless.

And it was in that moment that Kurt could see himself doing this forever. No, forget seeing, he could _feel_ his future-self falling asleep to this memory and waking up for this promise. He knew that he would recreate it whenever his mind wandered and if he ever kissed another pair of lips again, this would be the night, the room, the kiss, the boy who haunted him – paling every other experience to nothing but a shadow of what was happening right now.

Because it wasn't about want, it wasn't about needing, it wasn't about going farther; it was about _savoring_ and almost worshipping the fact that their bodies were capable of anything like this. It was about taking away the pain of subsisting for a moment. Like every aspect of Kurt's life was tethered to him, pulling him in every direction. But when Blaine's mouth was on his, those wires were eroding one by one, making him feel lighter and lighter – more like himself.

It was like freedom.

Only up to this point he'd never known himself to be inhibited in any way and all it took was this boy's lips to show him how sweet heaven tasted. And maybe he never wanted to go back.

Kurt was the one who pulled away first. Just an inch, just enough to stop them. He looked at Blaine and smiled, kind of laughing, because who knew kissing could be so easy or relaxing? He was mellow right now – he was on cloud nine.

Blaine grinned back at him, but seemed a little embarrassed.

"So…" Kurt exhaled, running a hand through his mussed up hair. "That's how it's done, huh?"

"Yeah, sorry," Blaine apologized, sitting up a bit, Kurt still basically in his lap from the whole kneeling-over-him situation. "I just thought it'd be easier to _show_ you the basics, umm, like that."

"The basics," Kurt repeated, nodding. "So there are more advanced tricks?"

"Well…"

"Could you show me?"

"Depends on how long you have."

"I'm free all evening long," Kurt teased.

But then he didn't have time to say anything else because they were back at it again. And somehow Kurt got the feeling that he could be very good at this if he put in enough work.

* * *

"Ryan's going to love you," Blaine mumbled later.

Right. _Ryan_. The reason why he had the freak out and needed help in the first place – great. "You think?"

Blaine pulled on his shirt (which had been removed again somewhere in the second session) and nodded stiffly. Considering that he was a guy who had just been getting seriously kissed, he looked totally bent out of shape.

"So I guess we shouldn't tell anyone about this," Kurt said, feeling awkward all of a sudden as he sat at the foot of Blaine's bed.

Blaine looked over at him. "Guess not."

"_Especially_ not Seb," Kurt warned. "Or I swear, Blaine…"

"He won't hear it from me," Blaine swore.

"And I guess this shouldn't…happen again," Kurt said, a little sad about this assertion on his part.

"_Well_…"

Kurt looked at Blaine, searching for some snag of hope that…

"If you ever feel like…you need more _practice_, I wouldn't oppose _tutoring_ you," Blaine said with a shrug. As if he hadn't basically just suggested that Kurt could come and make out with him whenever the fancy struck him.

Well, if he wasn't careful, he might find himself with one dedicated student.

Kurt sat up a little straighter. "Really?"

"Sure, why not?"

Kurt could think of a million reasons _why not_, but the greater part of his part screamed at the part that controlled his mouth to, for the love of lips, _shut up!_

"Hey, Blaine. Where'd you learn to, uh, do that?" he asked instead.

Blaine reddened instantly. "No where," he said, kind of louder than necessary. "It's late," he announced, glancing at the clock that read 9:03pm. "You should go."

"Yeah." Kurt stood up awkwardly and walked to the door, opening it and beginning to walk out of the room.

"And Kurt?" Blaine called after him.

Kurt turned around…straight into Blaine, who gave him one last, long kiss. Kurt automatically braced himself on the other boy's hips and leaned forward so as to get every last possible second of that kiss until Blaine pulled back.

"Any time," was all Blaine told him.

Kurt just nodded and shut the door behind him.

As he ran back across the street to his house, all he could think about was that he just _might _have to take Blaine up on that offer some time.

Soon.

* * *

_**A/N: **The only thing I have to be sorry about is the fact that I'm NOT sorry - in any way, shape, or form. So sorry._

_I don't know, I've been reading a lot of romantic comedy type novels and I got a few ideas from them, and this needed __to happen. I just have so many feelings!_

_It was so fun to write, and I've received lots of support from the couple of people I'd confided in about this story, so I'm happy right now! I intended for it to be a one-shot, but I have lots and lots of ideas for a few more chapters. On a side note, __Sebastian Smythe is my baby, and I don't condone hate or ship wars so please don't bring them here, thank you. __I also don't promise that everyone will be happy with everything or what pairing this will end with - BUT it will be really fun so yeah (:_

___As always, thank you for reading!_

_**[EDIT]:** HOLY CRAP you guys have been AMAZING and so supportive! Seriously, you're blissing me out. I will DEFINITELY be continuing this verse, but I need to update my other main story before I can start that. You guys are seriously the best readers ever and your support means the world to me! Patience, and the next part will be here as soon as I can manage! Thank you guys so much - from the bottom of my heart, honestly.  
_


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